Why does Indian national identity remain so powerful even while globalization is changing the country profoundly? | The India Site | Dishing up Indian news and non aligned views | India: A Portrait by Patrick French

Why does Indian national identity remain so powerful even while globalization is changing the country profoundly?

In India, the past is part of the present, and ancient history is linked to everyday life in a way that is unmatched in any other world culture, and in a form that is wholly unselfconscious. A seal found at the ancient city of Mohenjo-daro dating to around 2000 BCE shows a figure, seated in a yogic position, which seems to be a representation of the deity Shiva. To a Hindu today (who might sit in that very yoga position each morning) the pose, the trident, the bull and the phallus would be immediately familiar: a similar representation of Shiva might be found painted on a roadside rock or dangling from a truck’s rearview mirror. Many Indians, conscious of their timelessness but with no informed idea of their own history, are connected to their ancestral past every day. Modernity is converted to a purely Indian form…